Moonbat alert: Chomksy condemns Bin Laden kill.

The articles are sound, but i was just quick to dismiss them due to the sources (CT/subjective) (a sour tree never produces sweet fruit and all that).

And any invocation of Nuremberg is making a comparison to the Third Reich and what it had done in Eurasia and North Africa. It's just that after reading about what the Nazis had done in WW2 makes me hostile to the comparison.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
zomblog doesn't claim to be academic, but usually takes photographs of demonstrations.

Chomsky, in the OP, compared Bush to Hitler, and by extension, the US military in Iraq to the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

George galloway's numerous appearances at demonstrations and his diatribes.

As for my statements about the left, i was talking about groups like World Can't Wait, or Code Pink etc. during the Bush Derangement Syndrome years.
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The question wasn't whether xomblog was 'academic', but whether it was more or less reliable than the other sites you mentioned. Your evasion of the actual question is noted.

Your extension of Chomsky's remark has been addressed above. You really must try to draw a clearer distinction between what someone actually said and what you'd like to pretend they said.

Of George Galloway, I've quite forgotten what your point was and you appear now not to have one. GG said 'some things' at 'sometime', 'somewhere'. I'm sure he did. You'd like me to believe they substantiate some argument you were perhaps developing, but without saying what they were. I'd suggest we just let that go, if you have nothing particular to say on the matter.
 
JQ,

you said Zomblog's reliability could be gagued by how many people cited it in academia etc. That's an "appeal to authority fallacy. Zomblog only catalogues events and adds their opinion.

Any comparison to Nuremberg is effectively saying they're a nazi.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
Any comparison to Nuremberg is effectively saying they're a nazi.
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Its always easy to win when you oversimplify your target's words, Chomsky is not the first to mention that passage and if you google it, you'll see it's currency nowadays is based on the fact that the illegal invasion of another country was called the "supreme international crime" during the Nuremberg trials, which basically launched the modern era of international law, codifying certain bedrock principles which we still follow today - at least for the most part (and this is why this passage is quoted nowadays).

Now Chomsky shorthanded, but others like Glenn Greenwald take more time and usually ground the reference in discussions of whether George Bush and others could be charged with war crimes (the trials establishing the idea of "war crimes" and thus being a perfectly reasonable thing to reference). So now you will disagree vehemently with this, but understand that these people believe the war was illegal, and that given the war was illegal and "the supreme international crime" as stated at Nuremberg, that Bush could be charged for launching an illegal invasion of a sovereign state.

Of course, I am not asking you to accept any of these evaluations, claims or statements. But what I am hoping for is some recognition that Nuremberg can be a valid reference when discussing war crimes and is not, ipso facto, some BS form of godwin.
 
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egslim said:
Oh, put up or shut up.

The article refers to a study from one of the schools of Columbia University.

If you find a flaw in their research, fine, then you might have a point.

But if all you can do is whine about a website that merely referred to their study, just shut up.
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If your link actually worked I could read the study, but your link doesnt work.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
JQ,

you said Zomblog's reliability could be gagued by how many people cited it in academia etc. That's an "appeal to authority fallacy. Zomblog only catalogues events and adds their opinion.

Any comparison to Nuremberg is effectively saying they're a nazi.
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No, you could easily have quoted me but that would have shown I said no such thing. I did say that I'd be prepared to accept (in the expected absence of any actual, legitimate, study of the comparative reliability of zomblog and the others) any citation of zomblog anywhere that mattered.

This you failed to do, and compounded your failure with that common fallacy of "making things up as you go along".

I can compare many elements of Nuremberg to all manner of like and unlike things, without reference to Nazis at all. I confess I'm a tad lost, you have difficulty adequately expressing yourself so I'm not sure which comparison in particular you think is 'effectively' (you have a very effective imagination, as has been noted) 'them' saying 'they' are nazis. Which they, and which them, I cannot say and I'd prefer that you didn't - I have little further interest in engaging with you.
 
egslim said:
Try this link: http://www.newsfrommiddleeast.com/?new=75579. In addition to the article it includes two research papers.

Copies of the article are easy to find if you google "Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health wikileaks study".
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That link claims the Lancet study has been confirmed, when in reality the Lancet study has no credibility at all, and even Lancet backed off on the claims.

I wonder if the authors of the study realize that there's many different ways to translate an Arabic names or places into English? I suspect that is the basis for the 19% claim, though it's hard to know when the link to the study doesn't work.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
The articles are sound, but i was just quick to dismiss them due to the sources (CT/subjective) (a sour tree never produces sweet fruit and all that).
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Well, apparently this tree did, at least once. ;)

With this additional information, what is your guess/estimate for the total number of civilian deaths in Iraq due to the invasion, and what do you base it on?

My figure of 500,000 - it's no more than a guess - is based on the assumption that the IBC missed the same percentage of the total figure as they did of wikileaks' figure. And it could be higher or lower, depending on how the biases of the two counts relate.

And any invocation of Nuremberg is making a comparison to the Third Reich and what it had done in Eurasia and North Africa. It's just that after reading about what the Nazis had done in WW2 makes me hostile to the comparison.
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The significance of Nuremberg is that it held the leadership of a country responsible for the consequences of that country's actions, according to the rules of law.

By that comparisson Bush should be held responsible for the consequences of the invasion of Iraq.

In my opinion the whole principle is just a thin rationalization of the time-honoured custom of killing your enemy's leaders after a victorious war, but that's besides the point. What matters is Chomsky wants to hold Bush personally responsible for the misery caused by the invasion of Iraq, along the principles of Nuremberg. It's not a comparisson with Nazi-ideology.
 
egslim said:
Well, apparently this tree did, at least once. ;)

With this additional information, what is your guess/estimate for the total number of civilian deaths in Iraq due to the invasion, and what do you base it on?
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Maybe the "lower is better" principle?

:D
 
WildCat said:
There is no way in hell the 1 milllion figure is a "gross underestimate". Unless you misspelled "overestimate".
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I referred to the two counts used in the meta-study, of 66,000 and 104,000 respectively.

WildCat said:
If your link actually worked I could read the study, but your link doesnt work.
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Fixed that in post #197.

WildCat said:
That link claims the Lancet study has been confirmed, when in reality the Lancet study has no credibility at all, and even Lancet backed off on the claims.

I wonder if the authors of the study realize that there's many different ways to translate an Arabic names or places into English? I suspect that is the basis for the 19% claim, though it's hard to know when the link to the study doesn't work.
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It would be more convenient if you had actually followed the discussion, before you replied.

Anyway, matches were rated on a scale from 0 (= no match) to 3 (= highly probably match). So the authors allowed for room to doubt the translation of names and places.
 
So even by taking the highest estimate for casualties during the Iraq insurgency, the number is still way below Saddam's one million. Even though the insurgency casualties were overwhelmingly caused by terrorist militias, not the government. So it's comparing apples with meatloaf.

We agree that the elected Iraqi government is better than Saddam's then? I don't even know why people are trying to challenge this. They mustn't know much about the brutality and sadism that characterized Saddam's rule.
 
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Virus said:
So even by taking the highest estimate for casualties during the Iraq insurgency, the number is still way below Saddam's one million. Even though the insurgency casualties were overwhelmingly caused by terrorist militias, not the government. So it's comparing apples with meatloaf.
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Well, a few things - saddams 1 million was over a much longer time period, so you're comparing different sized bags of apples. And regardless of whether or not you can back up the claim about terrorist militias, the reason they killed so many people is because of the situation that america created, making them at least partially responsible.

Virus said:
We agree that the elected Iraqi government is better than Saddam's then? I don't even know why people are trying to challenge this. They mustn't know much about the brutality and sadism that characterized Saddam's rule.
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The question should be, do we have a right to go around the world enforcing regime changes through violence, in the hope that the replacement regime is better? There is no evidence that future genocide was planned, and there was no reliable WMD evidence. Is it acceptable for the west to act as World Police when they aren't actively preventing a conflict?
 
Virus said:
So even by taking the highest estimate for casualties during the Iraq insurgency, the number is still way below Saddam's one million.
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Oh, we haven't even gotten around to that one million-figure of yours. Which was taken over a period of 35 years, compared to the 8 years since he was overthrown. So even if it's accurate, it should be divided by four for a comparable figure.

We agree that the elected Iraqi government is better than Saddam's then?
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Like I said, don't be so impatient. If we look only at the number of deaths, then 8 years under Saddam cost about 230,000 Iraqi lives. Which is comparable (I'm being generous here) to the number of Iraqi deaths during the last 8 years.

Then add the millions of refugees, the dissolution of a secular society into a sectarian one, the material destruction of a civil war, and the practical elimination of women's rights during the past 8 years. I wouldn't call those changes improvements.

But the real proof in the pudding will be how the Iraqi governments hold up for the next 30 years. I expect sooner or later the central Iraqi government will want to re-establish control over the Kurds. Among other niceties.
 
WildCat said:
There is no way in hell the 1 milllion figure is a "gross underestimate". Unless you misspelled "overestimate".
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Let's say that one million is about right, for the sake of the argument. Even assuming that many people are right (that Americans are all just stupid, vicious scum who just want to kill people and get oil, which some people seem to believe), it seems obvious that Americans are not getting much value for money. Since the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are probably more than a trillion dollars, that's more than a million dollars per death. There are people in New Jersey who will do a hit for $5,000, and they'll give a quantity discount.

Since Godwin has already been invoked, at least the Nazis switched to Zyklon-B when one bullet per Jew became cost-prohibitive.

Also, where's my damn oil? I'm pretty sure I could have gotten more, cheaper, simply by buying the stuff.

If we're the New Nazis, it appears that we aren't doing a very good job of it.
 
So, since I got your attention back on the topic, do you agree with Chomsky or not? Is the killing of OBL justified?
 
I scanned the thread and it seems mostly derail about Iraq and Nazi Germany, I'd like you to comment on OBL's killing, which is the topic.

It shouldn't be too hard
 
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This thread is heaps about Iraq. It drifted because Chomsky thinks Bush is worse than Bin Laden and the Nazis because he overthrew a genocidal, fascist regime.
 
I'm not surprised that Chomsky condemns the Bin Laden kill. In fact, if he supported it, that might dull my happiness over it just a little.

As I posted on another thread, I'm curious what people like Chomsky would say about the targeted killing of Admiral Yamamoto in World War II.
 
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